


Echoes

by ackermom



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 07:39:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11619006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ackermom/pseuds/ackermom
Summary: Bertholdt only caught one of their names and she’s the one making eyes at him: Maria, unfortunately. Her name could not have been more poorly suited to this situation and she doesn’t even know it.





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> dark ao3, show me the compulsory heterosexuality discourse

Reiner’s been talking about blowing off steam for weeks.

At first, Bertholdt thought he meant doing the usual: sneaking a case of ale from the storehouse, drinking until they pass out, and wake up the next morning feeling sick, but all the better for it. That does the trick for most of the recruits, and often it’s how they celebrate the end of their exams. It’s how they’re celebrating tonight, packed like sardines into a rented room just off the training compound, passing bottles of sour beer and hushing each other to keep the landlord off their asses. Bertholdt thought that’s what they would be doing as well.

He didn’t think-

“I’ve set us up,” Reiner says with glee after giving Bertholdt a playful punch on the shoulder. “You can thank me later.”

Bertholdt rubs the tender spot on his shoulder. “I thought we were just going to the party.”

They’re walking into town, the sunset at their backs. They trail the rocky back road from the training compound, not far behind a group of their comrades who are leading the way to the hidden house party. It feels strange to be out of their uniforms for once, but the lack of belts and straps is a relief for their bruised limbs, and they’ve got to take what pleasures they can.

Reiner glances at him, momentarily confused, then laughs. “No, man. We talked about this.”

“Talked about what?”

“Girls,” Reiner exclaims. “I’ve set us up with girls.”

Bertholdt stops dead in his tracks. “We did not talk about this.”

“We absolutely _did_ talk about this. I said that we should blow off some steam after the end of exams, and you know, have a little fun, and you said that sounded like a good idea, and then I said that I’d met some girls who were interested in hanging out, and you said, yeah, sure, whatever-”

Truth be told, he had stopped listening to that particular rambling rant of Reiner’s long before any girls were ever mentioned: something he realizes now. He had just assumed that they would be going to the party. They had always done the same thing after exams, so why would this time be any different? Except it was different. It was a sore truth that Bertholdt realized as he impishly followed Reiner into town, stumbling over his boots. They might not be old enough to go to the taverns yet, but they certainly were not children anymore. He had changed a lot since they had come to the island and just as much in the last year alone. He had shot up by a foot and now stood a head over everyone else: an uncomfortable reminder. He had noticed Reiner changing, as well. His arms seemed to get thicker every day, and, well, it was hard not to notice certain things in communal showers.

But girls? The thought is laughable. What would Bertholdt say ( _do_ ) to a girl? And moreover, what would Reiner do? They have never talked about it, never even hinted at it, but- Bertholdt knew. Reiner had never been one for girls. Growing up together, those are the kinds of things you notice about a person, even if you never acknowledge it out loud. It was something Bertholdt had always known, even before they came to the island.

He wonders what has changed.

“Are you sure about this?” Bertholdt asks as they approach the outskirts of town. The village is bustling on the warm summer night, and Reiner leads them between the crowds, reaching back to grab Bertholdt by the arm when a particularly lively salt merchant corners him.

“I mean,” Bertholdt exclaims when they burst through the crowd, “where did you even meet them?”

“They come by the graining grounds all the time,” Reiner says. He ducks beneath a low-hanging line of lantern lights and holds it up for Bertholdt too. “I can’t believe you’ve never noticed them. Soldiers are a big hit in town apparently, even just trainees, but, well-” Reiner glances back at Bertholdt and kisses one of his biceps. “Who wouldn’t be?”

He’s unusually cocky tonight.

“I’m just not sure about this,” Bertholdt says a few minutes later. They’re waiting on the other side of the crowded market, the designated meeting spot that Reiner apparently set up ages ago without his knowledge. Bertholdt watches the young couples strolling through the town, arm in arm, then turns his gaze away. “This seems wrong.”

“You want to have a little fun, don’t you?”

Of course he does. He’s sixteen.

“I’m not sure this is how I want to have my fun,” Bertholdt says. “I mean, I don’t even know them. I don’t want them to get any ideas.”

“I wouldn’t have said yes if I thought we’d end up married.”

_Said yes?_

“They asked you?” Bertholdt exclaims.

The look Reiner gives him is absolutely incredulous. “Do you listen to me at all? I told you this last week.”

Bertholdt falters. “Can you repeat it just to refresh my memory?”

“Do you want me to write it down in case you forget again? They hang out by the training grounds, I told you that, and a few weeks ago, one of them was there, and we, you know, started talking, and then she asked if I had any friends for her friend, and then we, you know, decided it would be mutually beneficial for all four of us to meet up and have some fun. Is that good enough for you?”

Bertholdt sighs and looks down. “I don’t understand why girls like you so much.”

“Thanks, Bert. That’s great.”

“I don’t mean-”

“Hey, shut up, here they come.”

The girls approach arm in arm, all smiles and giggles as they squeeze through the stalls of the market and saunter up to where the boys are waiting. They’re cute, Bertholdt will give them that, and he’s relieved seeing them in person, confirming that they’re just normal girls. But they’ve braided their hair in that way that girls think is attractive (it’s not) and they laugh like Reiner is the funniest person they’ve ever met (he’s not).

“Ladies,” Reiner says. “What a pleasure to see you tonight.”

The girls grin at them. “Cadets,” one of them says. “Fancy running into you here.”

It’s the kind of shit that makes Bertholdt roll his eyes, until Reiner shoves him right into the middle of it, and he’s suddenly got a girl on each arm, cooing up at him.

“You didn’t tell us your friend was so tall,” one of the girls says.

“He’s nearly a titan, isn’t he?” Reiner exclaims.

“Reiner!” Bertholdt hisses, glaring at him.

“What?”

“Well, come on,” one of the girls says suddenly. She and her friend let go of Bertholdt and start out of town, waving for the boys to follow them. “Let’s go while the night’s still young.”

Reiner starts after them without a second thought, slapping Bertholdt on the back before he goes; Bertholdt lingers behind for a moment with the distinct impression that this is not going to end well. He only catches up when Reiner glances back at him and threatens him with forcefully mouthed words that he can’t understand. He sighs, then picks up his feet and starts after the trio, headed into the dark night out side of town.

“What’s gotten into you?” Bertholdt whispers as they follow the girls. They traipse down a moonlit trail beyond the village, eventually leading them to clamber over a wooden fence into a wide, open pasture.

Reiner looks back at him as he leaps over the fence. “I don’t know, but something’s about to get into her…”

“Reiner, would you shut up? She can hear you.”

The girls can hear them, but they don’t seem to mind Reiner’s comments. Bertholdt only caught one of their names and she’s the one making eyes at him: Maria, unfortunately. Her name could not have been more poorly suited to this situation and she doesn’t even know it. When Bertholdt sees that the girls are leading them to an old barn, he grabs Reiner by the shoulder.

“This doesn’t seem like a good idea,” he mutters.

“You’ve been griping for the last ten minutes,” Reiner says, shoving Bertholdt’s hand away. “Would you get over yourself already?”

“You would follow any old stranger into a murder barn if they promised you sex, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re being paranoid. Would you stop?”

“I just don’t know if-”

Reiner sighs. “Listen, you can go back if you want. No one’s forcing you to be here.”

Unfortunately, he doesn’t know his way back to the compound from here. The sinking feeling in his stomach only gets deeper as they’re led into the barn, but he finds that it is just that: a regular barn stacked with barrels of hay. He sucks in a deep breath. He’s done it again: made a big deal out of nothing. Maybe this won’t be so bad. It is just a bit of fun, after all, like Reiner said, and they have earned a break after all this time. It’s nothing: just losing his virginity to a stranger in a barn- well, it’s not like he was saving it for anyone.

“Fine, I’ll stay,” Bertholdt mutters. “But only because I’m afraid of where you’ll end up if I leave you here on your own!”

“You’ll amuse her, right?” Reiner asks under his breath. The girls are unboxing a hidden case of ale and popping open some of the dusty green bottles. Bertholdt catches the wink that Maria throws at him from across the barn. “Don’t stay just for my sake or you’ll be leaving Maria out to dry. Come on, you need to relieve the most stress out of all of us.”

“You’re the cause of most of my stress,” Bertholdt mutters.

Reiner doesn’t hear him. He takes a swig from the bottle that one of the girls gives to him; moonlight peeks through thin slats in the wooden door and glints off the dark glass of the bottle, reflecting on the droplet that spills onto Reiner’s chin. He takes another drink, then passes it to Bertholdt and stumbles off with the girl who grabs him by the hand. Bertholdt holds the bottle gingerly, grimacing at the sour smell; Maria presses it to his lips, taking a sip from her own drink as she presses him to do the same. The beer is stale, but he swallows it for nerve. He swallows some more. Reiner and his girl collapse against a hay bale by the door, giggling as they fumble with hands and buttons. Bertholdt stares for a moment, aghast, then looks away. Maybe he’s had Reiner wrong this whole time. Maybe it was just-

“Come on,” Maria says. She grabs him by the hand. “Let’s go over here.”

She guides him to the back of the barn, smiling at him, and lies down against a pile of hay, dragging him down with her. The hay lies stiff beneath them, but she is warm and soft. He doesn’t mind the way he kisses her, gentle, with fingers dancing across his jaw, but he stutters when she reaches for his belt and hikes up her skirt. She grabs his cock with more force than he’s prepared for, and he gasps; on the other side of the barn, he hears Reiner laugh.

“Don’t worry about them,” Maria says, turning his embarrassed gaze back to her. “Just look at me.”

She grabs his hands and fingers herself with them, all the while humming against his neck. He doesn’t know what to do, but he’s growing harder by the minute and losing reason all the while, so he lets her guide his hands and kisses her collarbone to make up for it.

“Have you ever been with a girl before?” she asks when she pulls his hand away.

He’s never been with anyone before. He hears Reiner groan.

“It’s okay,” she says before kissing him again. “It’s not that hard. Here, just put it in and- yeah, that’s it.”

He doesn’t want to lose himself to a girl that he doesn’t know, but Reiner is ten feet away doing just the same thing.

Maria pulls at the collar of his shirt. “Slow down.”

“Uh, okay.”

She kisses the corner of his lips. “I want you to make love to me.”

Bertholdt panics. Her eyes are too kind, her smile too earnest, and he has to get out of here.

“I’m sorry,” he exclaims, frantically rolling away from her. “This was a mistake.”

“What?” she asks, sitting up in the hay. Her shirt falls open and she crosses her arms to cover herself as he stumbles back into his boots. “Where are you going?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I have to go.”

“That’s it?!”

“I’m sorry!”

One of her shoes hits him on the shoulder on his way out. “Jackass!”

“Bert,” Reiner exclaims, stumbling to his feet. He catches Bertholdt at the door, pulling hay out of his hair, and grabs his by the arm to hold him back. “Hey, where are you going?”

“I’m going home,” Bertholdt says, then takes a breath and that back. “I’m going back to the barracks. This was stupid and I should never have come here.”

Reiner smacks a hand onto the door and bars his way out. He’s shirtless and his trousers are halfway undone, and the girl he’s been fooling around with is lying impatiently in the hay, fingering herself as she waits for him. “What do you mean?” Reiner asks, lowering his voice. “She likes you.”

“Did you hear what she said to me?” Bertholdt hisses. “She told me she wants to _make love_. I can’t do that to her.”

“That’s when you say, _sure, honey, anything for you_ ,” Reiner says under his breath, “and then when it’s over, that’s when you act like a dickbag.”

“It _is_ over,” Bertholdt says. He grabs Reiner’s arm and throws him away from the door. “Get off.”

“What’s wrong with you? She’s a perfectly nice girl?”

“What’s wrong with _you_?” Bertholdt hisses. “What the hell’s gotten into you? Since when do you know how to-” he gestures blindly at the girl touching herself in the hay “-to do that?”

“It’s just a bit of fun,” Reiner says, furrowing his brow. “Lighten up.”

“A bit of fun? What happens if you knock her up?”

“It won’t get that far.”

“But if it does? Reiner-” Bertholdt steps in closer, his jaw clenching. “We’re not here to have fun or act like kids. We have a job to do.”

He thinks about hitting Reiner, bringing him back to his senses with a good whack across the head. He thinks about how good that would feel. He settles for a push instead, and he shoves Reiner back as hard as he can before he turns on his heel and stalks out of the barn.

He gets lost, of course. He doesn’t know where the hell he is and he’s so frustrated that he walks furiously for half an hour before he realizes that he doesn’t know where he’s going. He stops to wipe the taste of her lips out of his mouth. Then he takes a deep breath and realigns himself with the stars. It’s another hour before he finally trudges back onto the training compound, his boots caked with mud, his body and mind both exhausted. The soldier at the front gate slaps him with a warning: cadet out past curfew. Bertholdt takes it quietly and starts for the barracks. He just wants to go to bed.

He’s walking alongside the barrack house, rubbing his tired eyes, when he’s suddenly grabbed by the shoulders and thrown against the wooden wall. His eyes go wide and he grabs the wrist that snatched him, ready to fight. But when he looks up, it’s just Reiner: Reiner, his eyes shining bright in the darkness, his face contorted in indescribable irritation.

“Reiner,” Bertholdt says, lowering his clenched fists. “What the hell-?”

“You’ve been acting weird,” Reiner exclaims. He furrows his brow and puts his hands on Bertholdt’s shoulder, staring straight at him.

“You’re the one who’s acting weird,” Bertholdt exclaims. “Get your hands off me.”

Reiner steps back, but he doesn’t leave. He drops his hands and relaxes his shoulders, and Bertholdt can see now that he’s more puzzled than angry: lost in confusion without rhyme or reason.

“What’s wrong with you?” Bertholdt mutters, standing up from against the barracks wall. “You didn’t have to ambush me like that.”

“Would you have stopped to talk to me otherwise?”

Bertholdt looks away. “What is there to talk about?”

“We can talk about you, for starters.”

“Reiner,” he exclaims, frustrated, “can’t we just forget that tonight ever happened? I’m sorry for acting like a dick, but I really just want to go to bed-”

“We can talk about you and me.”

Bertholdt stops. “What?”

“You and me,” Reiner says as Bertholdt looks up to meet his gaze. “I think that’s what we need to talk about.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Bertholdt says, lowering his voice. He steps to the side, his boots scuffling in the dirt, but Reiner stops him, corners him against the wall again and stares at him with a hard line written across his brow as the pale moonlight reflects against the sheen of his eyes.

“You didn’t want to fool around with that girl,” Reiner says, stepping closer. “Is it because you wanted to fool around with me?”

Bertholdt sputters. He can feel the heat rushing to his face, and his gaze flickers away as Reiner narrows in.

“You were acting weird,” he exclaims. “And that girl, whatever she wanted, I couldn’t give it to her-”

“Don’t lie,” Reiner breathes. “I see the way you look at me.”

“I don’t know what you mean-”

“It’s okay,” Reiner murmurs, stepping up to him. Their boots meet, toe to toe, and their faces are mere inches apart. “I wanted to fool around with you too.”

Reiner kisses him. Bertholdt melts under his touch.

Reiner slides a hand up his jawbone, his fingers brushing all the way up to Bertholdt’s ear, and he presses their lips together, gently at first; then, as he steps closer, their stomachs humming against each other, he kisses him harder, drawing Bertholdt’s breath with every touch. His hand bites at the back of Bertholdt’s neck with fingernails, and his other hand runs down Bertholdt’s shoulder, his arm, his wrist, then slides over to grab him by the waist and pull him close as they kiss.

Reiner’s hands get lower and lower, until finally they’re undoing Bertholdt’s belt, one notch at a time. Bertholdt whimpers, but he doesn’t stop kissing Reiner, grabbing him by the jaw, letting Reiner’s lips run over his cheeks, his collarbones, his shoulders, until finally Reiner unhooks his belt and pulls loose the front laces of Bertholdt’s pants. Bertholdt is hard before he knows it, and the air hits him like a hurricane when Reiner yanks his trousers down to his knees and takes the length of his cock into his hand.

Bertholdt gets a hand slapped over his mouth when he moans at the touch.

“They’ll hear us,” Reiner hisses. He strokes his thumb across the head of Bertholdt’s cock. “Do you like that?”

He nods, his mouth sealed under Reiner’s hand.

“More than the girl?”

He nods: if only because it is Reiner’s hand and not hers.

Reiner presses their bodies close and jerks him until he comes. He finishes with Reiner’s hand over his mouth, Reiner’s fingers around his cock, Reiner’s stomach against his, Reiner’s lips on his neck; he comes into the palm of Reiner’s hand, his knees trembling, and he clenches his fingers at the back of Reiner’s shirt. Reiner pulls his hand away and the come sticks to his finger.

“I’m sorry,” he says without looking up. “I shouldn’t have come onto you like that.”

“I didn’t stop you,” Bertholdt says breathlessly, but what he really means is that he didn’t want Reiner to stop. He fumbles with the laces of his pants and hopes that the darkness hides his blush. Reiner watches him.

Bertholdt clears his throat and stands up from against the wall, suddenly unsure of his balance. “I didn’t expect you to be here when I got back,” he says. “I thought…”

Reiner shakes his head as Bertholdt trails off. “I’ve been back for a while.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

The question is pointed and Bertholdt blurts it out without preface, but he wants to know. He expects Reiner to laugh or make a joke, but he simply looks up at Bertholdt.

“You saw what we were doing.”

“I mean, did you sleep with her?”

There’s not a difference, as far as he’s concerned, but Reiner seems to make the distinction, so Bertholdt tries it his way.

“No,” Reiner says, looking away again. “It got weird after you left and neither of us were really into anymore.”

He glances at Bertholdt with a wry smile. “Maria was pissed, by the way.”

Bertholdt sighs. “I feel bad,” he mutters, pushing a hand back through his hair. He’s surprised at how damp it is. He hadn’t realized how much he was sweating.

“You stuck it in her and then got up and walked out,” Reiner snorts. “You should feel bad.”

He looks down at his hand; the come stretches between his fingers like a web. “I’ve gotta go wash up,” he says before Bertholdt can speak again. “You should go to bed, or everyone will wonder where we’ve been.”

He disappears into the darkness, only his footsteps leaving an echo of his presence. Bertholdt watches him go, watches him walk away into the night, watches the air around his shape close as he vanishes from view. Bertholdt lingers outside for another moment, something strange and unwelcome welling up in his heart. He wants to stay here until Reiner returns, until the sun rises and they’re still talking as if they are beneath the stars. He wants to lie down in this spot and remember forever the way the earth feels tonight. He wants everything.

He wallows for a moment more, then dusts himself off and heads into the barracks, determined to sleep it off.


End file.
